Fighting for Attention
The Web is drawing viewers' eyes away from TV, yet it's far from the only distraction
By Mike Chapman
If there wasn’t already enough proof that the old boob tube is under assault from the home computer: Three-quarters of respondents to the most recent Adweek/Harris Interactive poll confirmed that they have watched a TV show online, and nearly 70 percent have watched a show online before watching it on an actual television.
Yet the threat to television watching is coming from old media too. Of those people still tuning in, many say they aren’t necessarily paying attention while they have it on. Some 44 percent of our respondents said they’re reading a book, magazine, or paperback while watching TV.
(Reading, in fact, was the second-most popular activity after surfing the Web.) Thirty-seven percent are texting while watching, and 40 percent are connecting with friends via Facebook and other sites. (No wonder Lost fans didn’t understand the show’s ending last year!)
The good news for TV (and the advertisers who love its reach)? Only 3 percent of our respondents said they don’t watch TV at all. We’d say 97 percent means it’s a medium that isn’t going anywhere—not yet, anyway.
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